Best Public Art Phoenix 2010 - Louise Bourgeois' Art Is a Guaranty of Sanity

When she died in June at 89, the French-born, American-based Louise Bourgeois left behind a link between the art of the 21st century and belle epoque Paris' cubism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. She also left Phoenicians with an enormous example of her best work at our downtown Convention Center. Art Is a Guaranty of Sanity is a 90-foot-tall sculpture of a vanity mirror that rises out of the atrium there. Stamped with its own title (the phrase on which Bourgeois based her life and career, she always claimed), the piece is a coy commentary on vanity in art and fashion as well as a gorgeous gift to our city, of which Bourgeois was reportedly very fond.